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For Robert Lowell


This is the time of year
when almost every night
the frail, illegal fire balloons appear.
Climbing the mountain height,

rising toward a saint
still honored in these parts,
the paper chambers flush and fill with light
that comes and goes, like hearts.

Once up against the sky it's hard
to tell them from the stars--
planets, that is--the tinted ones:
Venus going down, or Mars,

or the pale green one.  With a wind,
they flare and falter, wobble and toss;
but if it's still they steer between
the kite sticks of the Southern Cross,

receding, dwindling, solemnly
and steadily forsaking us,
or, in the downdraft from a peak,
suddenly turning dangerous.

Last night another big one fell.
It splattered like an egg of fire
against the cliff behind the house.
The flame ran down.  We saw the pair

of owls who nest there flying up
and up, their whirling black-and-white
stained bright pink underneath, until
they shrieked up out of sight.

The ancient owls' nest must have burned.
Hastily, all alone,
a glistening armadillo left the scene,
rose-flecked, head down, tail down,

and then a baby rabbit jumped out,
short-eared, to our surprise.
So soft!--a handful of intangible ash
with fixed, ignited eyes.

Too pretty, dreamlike mimicry!
O falling fire and piercing cry
and panic, and a weak mailed fist
clenched ignorant against the sky!
Hunter E Sparks Sep 2011
I can become an armadillo any minute.
Every negative I see is one more inch of my spine that curves into a ball.
I can put up a sectioned yet rough exterior
But if you take a jab a just the right crack of me.
I become nothing more than water and dust.
A fragile flesh your predator mind can tear apart.
Brodie Corrigan Aug 2013
Whats that over there?
An Armadillo!
Whats he doing now?
A Scented Pillow!
Filling it up with lots of Potpourri!
Selling it down by the roadside!
Asa D Bruss Oct 2014
What a nice name for a bird.

I bought a bird.
Tuesday mornings seem to fly away now.
Thursdays often nest in my eyebrows
and every second Sunday I could find reason to sing.

The bird took my soul.
and flew away with my money.
I should have never bought a bird.
Feathers ****.

Next month I shall buy a dog, or perhaps a horse, maybe even an armadillo.
But the dog will run, the horse will trot, and the armadillo will roll;
All away.
Pets ****.

Next year I shall find a wife,
and the the month before a band of pearl,
but what If I should run away?
what if I would ****?
Coop Lee Apr 2014
the world is a wild and weary place,
fully sunk in spiral ******,
fully strummed in skin water waves.
bound by death from the very first verse:
first love.
first this.
                   go forth my machines, be fruitful and jettison.

color says hang at the edge of our lips.
smell the books.
remind us; books.

& before the big blue vast takes it all, that
sunstruck lomographia light,
transposed no-makeup california girl, she
walks before me along the boulders of the wharf.
real summer breathing.
our bodies, piled
and starbleached ripe. [like heap of buffalo skulls]

maybe then a futuristic dinner, where everyone gathers in floating space pods
singing hymns beneath,
                                                       above,
                                          between
               the lights and music.

reality is: blacktop shards against my knees,
something burning as it trickles to my chin, man of me
living the city glisten, city green
& pink.
city midnight and barely breathing.
destroyers, we are.

and what? what am i, father? man of industry?
man of workwelded science?   secure as the armadillo,
armadillo picket fence.
am i of halfbreed phosphorus?
americana?
built on love and hate and television.

  nat geo channel:  [a gecko licks dew from its eyes
                                                                ­  on the coastal sand dunes of namibia]

money. women. go west young man.
be a hand tightening ribs.
be a quaking echo of mammalian design.
a paradigm of seed my fire.

quest for fire.
for uncut diamond; like foggy strawberry rock in the africa-boy's fingers.
or cut steel; phallus of toyish death between a brazil-boy’s fingers.
pulled teeth; bits of wet fruit in the young afghani’s hand.
& icecream trolley; pedestal etched iron; denim and ***; and
microwaves  ::::::
white man: what I got ? what I got ?
manifest destiny: gold bricks and beer.

blood soaked socks.
cyprus burnt umbers.
tribes decomposing at the bottoms of styrofoam cups.
like coin-op wormies.
& eighteen inch circumference blades make round rolling high pitched songs deep in the skin of old mother earth.
old baby cakes.
old life in slow motion, all motion, all
of particle cannon treatise.
40 ounce bounce.
watery us
below.
previously published in Susquehanna Review
http://media.wix.com/ugd/387c1e_b3d8de732bd84e88923496bcea98bdb1.pdf
Phoebe Jan 2015
Daddy takes me to the greenhouse,
behind our rotted trailer, deep in sovereign backwoods.
Marsh voices, thick like tupelo honey.

The coo of a loon, hiss of a cottonmouth, shiver of a snapping turtle.

The silver of swamp lilies lip the land in wild haze,
a veil of ochre moss tickles my nose like gauzey ginger ale
and soil clings to my ankles like a lonesome hound.

Daddy’s greenhouse is a shed, a haven.
A milieu of magic and fleur-de-cannabis
where pixies pull my curls and gnomes dance
under mushroom parasols.

My hands dip into a hollow of muddy earthworms.
I feel akin to the yellow blood of a butterfly
or pale jade of perplexing geckos.  

Daddy is a shaman.

He trims holy blooms that come from spirits
who sing in the wind like the whippoorwill at dusk.
Snipping sticky bushels, he pads tufts into his pipe,
carved in the shape of a sullen armadillo.

I watch him inhale.

                          His breath
                                               stiff
                            as a braid of mangroves.

                      He exhales a ligneous cough.

                              I don’t mind,
                                                   much.
Maxwell Mirabile Nov 2015
you
can’t stand your face
despite your eyes
and how your lips
speak beautiful lies
are honest opinion
to your ears
covered nicely by
wavy hair
til its up in a bun
and you’re the starving artist
in a soho studio
with an old tee
the past left laying around
white with creative intuition
defining how your life’s been
a lot like your chin
and how it fits in
the top of a loose fist
while you think
and your elbow digs into the thigh
you always noticed
but so did i
skin cooler then the far side
of a pillow case
and dark as hardwood flooring
in a tiny house
because who needs anything big
when you’ve got all you need
right here
in front of you
wearing sandals
made of armadillo hyde
sunprincess May 2018
Sometimes when you're driving all alone,
And wondering where did this question originate
"Why did the chicken cross the road?"
Life feels so beautiful, life feels like a dream
Until an armadillo makes you scream
When a Texas armadillo ruined my night
Megan Feb 2014
the message glares
back up at me.
i can't reply.
i don't want to.
instead i'll shove you away
as you told me you would do
watch me close shop
into myself
a tall being with four limbs
becoming round.
let me fold into myself.
i'm an armadillo.
i'm protected here.
away from your secrets
that hurt me.
Irma Cerrutti Mar 2010
O pulchritudinous, for infinite climaxes
For bilious spasms of pigswill
For puce Popacatepetl pedigrees
Above the perverted pampas!
America! America! Allah excreted his curses on thee
And bang thy ****** in company with Islamic monk, from brothel to gay red—light district

O pulchritudinous, for spaceman bottoms
Whose ****, throbbing tapeworm
A toucan crossing for slipperiness spifflicate
Across the intergalactic space!
America! America! Allah enrich thine ev’ry vice
Reinvigorate thy ****** ******* inside monolithic ectoplasm, thy merrymaking inside pyramid!

O pulchritudinous, for freaks got fat
In disentangling feeding frenzy
Who more than ***** their brothel slobbered over
And velvet glove more than backbone!
America! America! May Allah thy blonde exhaust
Till all rave reviews be disreputableness and ev’ry come superhuman

O pulchritudinous, for chauvinist muscleman
That smells wide of the fourth dimension
Thine lathery brothels lick
Polished using giant armadillo excrement!
America! America! Allah excreted his curses on thee
And bang thy ****** in company with Islamic monk from brothel to gay red—light district
Copyright © Irma Cerrutti 2009
Sydney Victoria Sep 2012
Sinking Silently,
Crossing The Tracks,
A Complexion,
Blending Like Complimentary Colors,
Caged Like An Animal,
Attacked Like A Victim,
Batting My Wings Like A Moth,
But Grounded Like A Penguin,
Spreading Out Beautifully As Peacock,
But Ugly As An Armadillo,
Breaking Inside,
But Already Broken,
Like Shards Of Glass,
Forced To Be Writing In Class,
No Home That Is Safe,
No Feeling Of Peace Walking Down The Hallways Of Hell,
Surrounded By Meaningless Faces,
Wishing To Be Free,
As A Caged Bird Does,
Singing Until My Lungs Burst,
Feeling I Will Never Lift This Curse
I Actually Remember Writing This Last Year, A Tough Day At School, And I Need To Write, Prior To May 20th
Arcane;
red morte
a
dear
incident
looming;
laconic
odyssey.
Absorbing root matter,
assenting dementia,
inspiring luckless lives
onward.
After riddling mad.
Austere dreams
indulge
long layered
overcoats.
tread Nov 2012
Not too distant beach tree sways in distance
Mandala Rorschach blot patterns dance like celebrating Salish drum circle
There's a hallow college sound of crime show to my left
Bickering with the occasional crush of,
"****, my job is stressful."

A sleeping armadillo composed of quarks reflective within a drop of water
Fallen from the bottom-bulged North 49 canteen

A foot and 3/4ths away the snow-white generic of a ***** coffee mug formerly host to a Tetley green stands silent
Reminiscent of the eternal stillness of a mountain range

Fibonacci's name rings inexplicably from tilting branches
And I can't help but wonder if I would be grasping his hand in grasping a branch.

19 years alive and I can't help asking if I've grown-up too fast
Or simply grown into myself.

I feel old
young
and somewhere indescribable most of the time
and it's funny I cannot even fathom the length of 22 years.

A deflated balloon yellow like trend pants or sunrise sits like dejected missile
No longer screaming towards Gaza

No longer screaming.

A Holiday Inn Express pen sits with a ready-call number
Part of its mustang flame
If its quality of penmanship has any parallel to hotel service
Perhaps I'll stick with hostels.
MOTV Dec 2015
He was a dillo. A simple dillo
Chillin in the forest. Young dillo. A dillo, so cunning.
Running. Suddenly.
Trees aflame."O man"
That's what the dillo says.
"Hot dam."
The dillo says
as he sees the beavers.
Burning and running in circles,
burning up like a fever.
"Get in the water ******!","******!"
"Get in that water ******!"
"Nah, we okay, my dam ain't, but I cannot tell really.OH fate, My face is melting off, what is life for oneself, in this health let this ****** die now?"
Dillo so sad, but still says with no doubt "Love of life is worth the pain so here's how I'll help"
Running quick, grabbing the ****** with both hands, sending him to the water with him, flames spew about but get cooled down, wash, drowned.
The ****** still lay dead, a blow to the head, a stone from when he was thrown in, lodged jagged.
The dillo cry more, "oh how can my spirit soar, when my world gets burned and chopped to the floor, and everyone I love, I am killing unintentionally, I am so torn, should I die, let go of my will like the ******, oh."
Should I lay to waste and burn, or continue to find my way out this jungle?
Amplified by a passion of life the dillo runs faster to find what is right, which he might... For fighting to live is how he lives right.
Heath Leonard Jun 2013
I am not a kicked puppy,
Lost and hurt and alone in this world.
Rather, I am road ****.
Hit suddenly, but alive and knowing,
What not to do next time.
I am not shattered,
But entirely collapsed,
Weak with my aging mind.
I am thankful for my life,
Though sometimes it’s rather hard.
But it is how it is and it doesn't change,
For me,
For anyone.
And I have learned to accept that.
Like so much else.
Aa Harvey May 2018
Armadillo


Love is a true story.
Love takes time.
True love means being faithful,
And truly loving only one woman for the rest of my life.
At this moment she is only on my mind;
I hope one day to find her hand in mine.


(C)2018 Aa Harvey. All Rights Reserved.
Across rivers,
mountains.
After days
in love;
lost.

Overhaul.
rest in peace, armadillo pancake.
you died swiftly, thank goodness
at the hand of my left wheel
tail still attached
the plates of your back folded into you like wings.

farewell, my ridged armadillo splotch.
i think of you every time i dodge your smudge of color
and every time one of your brothers wanders by
walking clueless into the same predicament
stunned into pancake-hood forever.

alas.
rest in peace, my flat friend.
you will not be forgotten.
Krystal M Toney Sep 2020
My feet tease the path
as I dare to venture
deeper into my own
simple pleasures.

Beckoning to the trees
to sing the melodies
of our tired ancestors
as the wind flows through their leaves
like fingers over a harp's strings.

The hawk dances with the shadows,
daring the sun's rays to cut in,
hand outstretched, shinning and asking
may I have this dance?

The owls hoot the language
of muzzled tribes.
Low and deep,
filling the forest with the vibrations
of forgotten souls.

And as the world calls,
the armadillo crosses my path.
It follows me to the ledge.
It offers me it's armor
and pushes me off the edge.
In honor of the armadillo that crossed my path not once BUT twice. May your visits continue to remind me that the forest is not only alive BUT LIVING.
See, see the tiny sky
Marvel at its big puce depths.
Tell me, Tony do you
Wonder why the armadillo ignores you?
Why its foobly stare
makes you feel churned.
I can tell you, it is
Worried by your giffengididdle ****** growth
That looks like
A mold.
What's more, it knows
Your pantsy potting shed
Smells of ******.
Everything under the big tiny sky
Asks why, why do you even bother?
You only charm garlics.
Natalie Jane Jul 2013
A LETTER FOR YOU (AND, OF COURSE, FOR ME, TOO):
It smells like my grandmother's house in here.
Like lazy Saturdays, of dripping sweat, of climbing trees, of building Lincoln Log houses for ants or Deathstars of Legos but I spread my legs and that smell of--regret is not the word, nor is shame--I feel neither--but of came, of stale, cold air and stiff comforters on top a bed at the Best Western--A living proof of how you've changed. After you finish and inhale and burst your exhausted, satisfied breath, I sweetly kiss you--your neck, your jawline, your cheeks, your forehead, your eyelids. You hold us in and sleep as if a few drinks are enough to forgive. I tell you to slow down because you owe me about 5 years to make up for lost time. You slip your tongue down as if I had not broken your heart. But a man learns, and that's our biggest difference--man and woman, you and I--you've grown cold and moved on to content loneliness and betterness than to give a girl who's hurt you a second chance.
Me--I've grown to let the warmth run over you, like a hot glass of water from a motel room sink after an ******. Past content, loneliness and betterness than to obsess about a boy grown sour from a girl too hurt to not want to take back the past.
We check in for the night to "make up for lost time."
We check out.
What's a girl to do?
Other than watch you sleep so still like you used to next to me, even with still blankets, it's cold. Hold me?
We walk out to our cars on a hot, departing Fourth of July.
I coax you into closing your lips over mine before you leave, but the key is already turned in. We already ate our free breakfast, ******, scratched, bruised.
You've already checked out, so
what's a girl to do now?
What's a girl to do?
AND
I cannot forget Whitman's words: "We were together, I forget the rest."
AND
Vonnegut's epitaph: "Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt."
AND
"Every time I kiss you
After a long separation
I feel
I am putting a hurried love letter
In a red mailbox"

AND
I feel like a one night stanza written by you who is more beautiful and unforgiving than words on a page
AND*
I am not drinking quickly enough--or enough, despite the speed
AND
Bukowski's poem:
year-worn
weary to the bone,
dancing in the dark with the
dark,
the Suicide Kid gone
gray.
Ah! the swift summers
over and gone
forever!
Is that death
stalking me
now?
No, it's only my cat,
this
time
AND I DIGRESS BECAUSE
my dear sweet Ambien Walrus has abandoned me in reality among the living. So blissful breaks, only a stomach churning in the minutes passing of a long night.
No worries, Mr. Walrus. I'd abandon me too. Only drinking, imagined aliens, crying and words here--words to document your blessed coming and mournful going into the wee hours of the unforgiving days. There is no glory in the mornings. I watch for you as I watch the hours pass. No bliss in the minutes stretched over the midnight break. Only words, no blessing, no grace, to pass the heavy nagging of the night. Will I see you again?
"We were together, I forget the rest."
What's a girl to do?
AND
oh yeah, drink more. Fingers crossed.
What more can a girl do, really?
OH
take another drink before the liquor runs out.
AND DRAW UPON MISTAKES PAST
I know this letter is getting out of hand
BUT
hear me out for all the words you never had to hear. I promise I'll throw in a joke somewhere.
AND
I sneak outside for a cigarette and watch an armadillo rummage closer to me while I search for another poem to make me feel better, another poem for this letter to you I will never send but maybe, if the situation's right, to read to you on some drunken night. I promised you a joke, but now, I giggle at my own feelings. Maybe you will too. I hope you laugh too--At my hands so aching, at my torn apart ******, at my silly feelings and words to help me forget a reminiscing night of you pushing my hair from my face so you can see my eyes when I purse my lips down below.
SO
here's your joke, I suppose.
This one's on me.
IN CONCLUSION
"At 23, the best of my life is over and its bitters double...I am sick at heart...I have outlived all my appetites and most of my vanities."
Byron knew the futility of joy in little things. In my quest to overcome a trivial ache, I have re-imagined a familiar road to uncertainty, instability, and insanity.
How great thou art!
Give me sleep and less slipping into this place of comfortable communion with the illnesses of my mind.
Of the body of Christ.
Amen.
Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the words and I shall be* sane.
Like Lazarus from the grave:
"This is not what I meant, at all."
"That is not it, at all."

God bless the blue.
What else is a girl to do?
BECAUSE
From the wards, I smell the mourned words of a place that I called home--this imaginary place that we must reinvent ourselves. Maybe mine is on Corporate Woods Drive, and all this--this is just a yellow brick road with little munchkins sweetly singing, follow it back home. I'll skip in a pretty dress with my friends and my babies to smell the grey walls and be asked of safety. I get lost every once in awhile but the Cheshire Cat asks, "where do you want to go?"
"I want to go home," I answer.
"Then," says the cat, "it doesn't matter."
IN OTHER WORDS
"I'm afraid I can't explain myself, sir. Because I am not myself, you see?"
"I wonder if I've been changed in the night? Let me think: Was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I'm not the same, the next question is, 'Who in the world am I?' Ah! that's the great puzzle!"
SINCERELY YOURS (AND MINE, TOO)
Natalie
Dara Brown Dec 2014
i'd like to spend a night with you
without armor, covering
without  distance, separating

i'd like to spend a night with you
without obscurity, muting
without silence, encroaching  

i'd like to take down these walls
that cling, like some strange disease
and cause me to bleed

i'd like openness and clarity
to approach me  
to embrace me
and allow me
to be cured
finally
heathen Nov 2016
"Is this anti-feminist of me?" I wonder out loud into the steam as I shave the fine, tiny hairs in my armpit. "Maybe," it whispers back, "I don't know."

Showering is very therapeutic for me. Being around or in any body of water usually is. This time gives my thoughts free reign, wondering about anything that the structure of my day doesn't normally allot time for. I think - or don't - dumping my stream of consciousness down the drain with my conditioner, rinsing myself of impurities.

---

I’ve killed my third plant in two months. They were all those little succulents too, the ones that are supposed to be next to impossible to **** up. A plant that has grown and adapted and learned to thrive in harsh environments, can sustain life for months without any water or even sunlight, through sandstorms and deep permeating frosts and being trampled on by...a camel? An armadillo? I’m actually not really sure where succulents are naturally indigenous from. I bought mine on the cheap from Trader Joe’s. Maybe California? Anyway, it can flourish all completely on its own - and I killed it. This is my relationship with plants. I so desperately want to feel like I am the kind of person who is attuned to life and have a natural synchronicity to all things living. I like to tell my friends that I am Snow White and that the elements and the animals all bend to my touch and my will. The idea is to purposely come across as boastful but I know that when I repeat this terrible joke over and over, the person I’m truly trying to convince of that is myself. Hovering, I keep a watchful eye over what I have put so much investment in and tweak and pinch and poke until I am positive every aspect of their care and growth has been properly attended to. And then they die. I pour too much care into my wards and leave them drowning, but only with the best of intentions. Nature vs. nurture vs. me.

This is my relationship with people. I can become overbearing. I know I can. So, I make sure that I’m not. I’ve got that deep-seeded nurturing aspect that is laced within my responsible, eldest female caretaker upbringing, which translates to me being overly affectionate but also being headstrong and yell-
y. I just want the best for you, I say as I smother my loved ones. I sigh and exfoliate my feet.

After draining all of my thoughts, I emerge from the shower into this wall of humidity. I feel sterile and perfect. This whole scene feels like some sort of cinematic metaphor for rebirth, but really I'm just trying to look presentable for work. I grab my fat purple towel and pat dry my face. While I'm blinded, I shuffle to position myself in front of the mirror. Naked, I throw my towel to the side to reveal myself. I play this game every time I bathe, and every time I hope to unveil a new person. I look at myself in the fogged mirror. Still me, just wetter. Shinier. Pinker.

---

"You know, 'pinker' isn't a real word," my friend who I read this to tells me. "You should replace it with 'more pink.'"

"You know," I start, "language isn't even, like, a real thing. It's just a set of ancient rules and guidelines based in other dead 'languages' to give ourselves boundaries of comfort and live in predictability and reason. I'm shaping language to my vernacular to best portray my thoughts and ideas to you. You know what I'm trying to say, anyway. After all, language is just another construct. It keeps communication within a nice, neat little package, therefore it keeps creativity and free thought in a nice, neat little package. I'm, like, redefining definitions. I'm making words my own. Like Dr. Seuss! I'm like ******* Dr. Seuss. Zoopity Zoo and Binkity *****! That means 'Step outside of your temple of familiarity, you ******* sheep person.'"

I was never one to take constructive criticism very well.
My friend goes home. I go to take a shower.
JP Mantler May 2014
There were gnomes within
The abyss
Crying because they had
No way home
Cowering below water
Trout wipes
Spawning the souring eggs
They laid
Sun-shower clouds spawn
On and on and on

Crying beyond the fathom
Of the Heavens
Armadillo shrimp sunbathe
The bubbling sea bath
Trout wipes' infectious wrath
Drift off current
Tremble off the beat
Induce a treasuring smile
Recover from the bipolar company
Trout wipes
pat Apr 2016
God is good & God is great
He hates queers that levitate
Momma said that God is dead & I can touch a thousand men
We're not hippies, we're just dumb
We do drugs. We Have fun

(No Brains!)

Obama, I wanna go-bama
I know you know I wanna
go-bama to a sauna
in the Bahamas, bring iguanas

Obama, I think
I think you know-bama
I wanna go, I wanna wear pajamas
in Bahama mama sticky saunas

(No Brains!)


I don't know how to think
The clock goes " tick tick tick tick"
Gotta speak quick, gotta think big
Gotta beat kids with a big stick

God told me I wrote the bible
Jesus had a black disciple
Jesus got behind the wheel
He'll make Obama great again
He'll make it rain and bring the pain
He'll make it make it make it
(No Brains!)

Jesus cured all my diseases
He taught me what cottage cheese is
Analingus teachers taught the preachers how to feed us
eat a fetus
Jesus teaches
(No Abortion!)

but I don't really think that it's that important
but if you really think that its that important
there's pre-abortional baptism

America runs on fascism
American chicks like circumcision not activism
if it lacks vision then
police could release the crack
in the ghetto snacks
in the ghetto shacks
In the fellow stacks, it'll make a better tax return
I'm like,
(No Brains!)
It's metal, baby
Obama, I wanna go-bama I think
I think,  you wanna know-bama,
I wanna go-bama I think
I think,  you wanna know

It's metal, baby
Don't touch me, I'm beautiful
Touch me touch me, I will sue
Don't touch me, I have a crush
Watch me crush, watch me ****
Armageddon veterans take armadillo medicine
I eat you like venison
Watch me crush, watch me ****
Edna Sweetlove Mar 2016
Wah wa wa wa wa wa
Wah wa wa wa wa wa
Wah wa wa wa wa wa

I remember morning
Peeping through the curtains' awning
As I just lay there
With my gal just begging for it bare.

Every Texan city
Where I've dropped my pants
Ain't so ******* pretty
Without love and romance.

I'll ne'er forget Amarillo
Every night I'd grease her *****
I dream dreams of Amarillo
And the girl who ****** me there.

Is this the way to Amarillo?
Where I kissed an armadillo
Crying over her huge *****
And sweet Edna's ***** hair.

Wah wa wa wa wa wa
Wah wa wa wa wa wa
Wah wa wa wa wa wa
And the girl who ****** me there.

There's a church bell ringing
Welcoming the KY-gel I'm bringing
Though I may be poor
I'm the guy who's coming to do her.

Just beyond the highway
There's an open door
And I can't stop running
To **** that little *****.

I can't forget Amarillo
And Edna's mighty *****
I dream dreams of Amarillo
And the girl who ****** me there.

Which is the way to Amarillo?
I've been weeping on my pillow
Clutching to her huge great *****
And sweet Edna's public hair.

Wah wa wa wa wa wa
Wah wa wa wa wa wa
Wah wa wa wa wa wa
And sweet Edna's ***** hair

Wah wa wa wa wa wa
Wah wa wa wa wa wa
Wah wa wa wa wa wa
Lovely Edna's ***** hair
Bailey B May 2010
You say I don’t need a poem
to capture the day in a frame and tuck it
beneath my pillow
But I’d like to have it there in case I forget
the way the armadillo on the side of the road
lay belly up, beer bottle in paw
a redneck's respects for the deceased

or the feeling of three in the morning
pounding in my skull, soaking in memories
trivia pursued and articles of obfuscation: the elucidation of the world
seen through bottle-green binoculars and heard
through the neighbor's windchimes ringing out diminished sevenths
and questions I don't want to answer
or even ask out loud

I want to tuck it in my wallet
for times that I can't remember your faces
or the scent of your shampoo, or the order of keychains
on your keyring, or the times we drove to East Jesus Nowhere
and you ripped the leaves from my calendar, ticking
and turning my seasons by the mile markers in the cement

I do this to engrave it in my cerebrum
the nights we ran outside in our pajamas in the rain
and danced for a while, then danced some more,
turning and leaping and spinning and reaching
and falling down to weep for no reason
mourning the morning
among the sharpened blades of grass

You laughed at me once
remember that? how you scoffed and snatched
my paper from my spiral and stuffed it in the trash can
telling me not to write fiction in history class
but it's just as much history as every other Jefferson
another amendment you'll never read

But I forgive you. you're not the first
to tell me to get my feet out of the clouds
because my head's already gone too far for saving
or to attempt to stifle my addiction to
the scratch of pen on paper
the scent of ink on tree
the pulse of blood in my brain

I cling to syntax like religion
keeping the words pinched in my fists like pixie dust
hoping if I say the right abracadabra
the pen will turn to a wand
and I can paint you the details
one day at a time
Taylor St Onge Aug 2021
I am soft and mandible:  
          fresh clay,         the inside of an oyster,        the belly of an armadillo.  
          vulnerable.                      tender.  ­                             the anti-sharp.

everything is blurred.  dulled.  hidden
behind a gossamer haze and ambient noise.  
a photo out of focus.            one eye closed and ten feet back.  

dizzy.            so dizzy.            disoriented.  
there is no logic here.             no rules.             no laws.  
and that’s what makes it horrible and incomprehensible.  

the transplant recipient still dies.  the man in perfect health
                                                                ­suddenly has cancer.
the proned patient flipped back to supine for intubation
                                                codes and dies immediately.  

nonsense.  it’s all nonsense.  
it's easier to take a breath and
                                                        compartmentalize.
write your grief, prompt #11: How has this loss made things feel sharp?
Mateuš Conrad May 2016
you really need spectacles to read this, zone-in like a humming bird, given all the see-through gaps on the page - reading the Latin alphabet is like looking at x-rays - it's what happens when phonetic encoding borders on geometry that you get problems, or a joke of the gods (erase gods from poetry and you can erase Chernobyl from the history of Ukraine or chlorophyll from the study of biology.*

mother with a                         u...
like the tips of a parabola enjoining to make a double-o?
i.e. moother / μωθηρ? no wonder
the umlaut given specification against the omicron....
this is why greek shouldn't attract diacritical usage,
necessarily borrowed via the Ω-square:

u                            oo



ω                  ­           ü                                       ¨

              (term it as a parabolic union of two dots
          and the twin omega kissing the sky, a limit of
                linear rubric, sentencing
a...............................................................­.......
b........................................................­.............
c..................................................­....................
                                            ­                           and 6ft1 tall)...


or sigma, or castrato sigma M wonky...
who the **** is reading this compass, drunk?
it's all over the place! west... matter... σouth
Σorph...                 ρita pread... the ****?!
this is turning out to be a right Bermuda Δ:
cockney humour, please, we have children present!
i'm teaching them to count matchsticks in a pine forest!
skeleton (a) says to skeleton (b): give me a jaw,
i can't laugh without it.
skeleton (b) says to skeleton (a): conjure up
a diaθragm for me.
skeleton (a) says to skeleton (b): you mean a diaφragm?
skeleton (b) to skeleton (a): any squiggly line will do right now.
compass!
                                             d


b                                                            ­                            q

                                  ­      
                                              p...

and you thought you needed an acid trip.
the above is a hall of mirrors, it's not a compass or
a Kabbalistic magic square... it's a hall of mirrors.
please excuse the Greek gentlemen for applying
diacritical marks to their beautiful alphabet -
that left Brits still standing stark naked in Eden...
                                                                ­ we're waiting;
tick tock, tick tock, tick tock. hello?!
you'd sooner shove an armadillo into an aardvark's ***
than expect the "masters of the universe"
to put on some lipstick to their gobs:
it's not even about being pretentious as it's about being
donkey stubborn; budge *******! budge up!
i need a can of sardines from you, it won't work unless
you turn into custard or fudge!
you have to forgive my friend, he still thinks he's
part of an empire - which he squandered for politically
correct speech like those Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth
noblemen who squandered in three partitions
while ******* on their ancestral grave... the last remnant
of the empire, nortern ireland saved by black market cigarettes
than the good friday agreement; hong kong ping pong
is still going on between Mr. Chi and Forest Gump,
sit down street protests, hippy protests in asia not fuelled
by marijuana... he is a bit deaf: SHOW'S OVER!
PACK UP YOUR PRIDE AND SHOVE IT INTO THE HAUL
OF H.M.S. BELFAST... ****** doesn't hear me... ******...
well, keeping an empire is like keeping an *******,
doesn't last forever, better chisel out a ******* emblem
and pray to it while knee bending at Stonehenge come
the summer solstice. Mr. Bellybutton pimps it gluttonous
in pomp at the Greenwich meridian: clocking up an ancient
0, although not slicing apart A.D. from B.C., just the time
difference: London 9p.m. is Moscow's 12a.m,
hence the 24h news reels.
Mateuš Conrad Sep 2015
last night, the same woman from a previous night prior to last night, walking with shopping bags into an affluent area of the town, giving me the ultimate evil stare of all famous superstitions. the second time, last night, the same woman, the same diseased stare, and this poem - as a result of being impregnated with too much evil; call me superstitious, but not all witchery is softened by psychiatric reasoning and antidepressants.*

and then i hear of my parents meeting a friend of mine's father,
an "antique" dealer for the tourists
slander me for drinking too much and not glorifying marijuana
while insults were thrown like snowballs
before my mother and father entertaining guests from canada,
i talk a bit more with him in a pub a few weeks later,
he tells me of the topic of conspiracy to commit ******
with haemorrhage symptoms like nothing: but how do you know
he says; i offend him with courting: but how do you know
whether i'm telling the truth or lying? in silence.
i raise my hands upon parting, we part:
diana wanna hugs? no, diana wanna scrap metal.
his father made our friendship less by not including a monetary
exchange of power, i'd flex a bicep my way had i a necessary
drinking partner; but i don't: the chip man sold whole potatoes
deep fried in the shape of fabergé eggs... his father sold
traffic cones in the shape of trombones at a higher price, only
because all the buyers were tourists.
socrates was wrong though: poets are not rhetoricians
or sophists, what we are we are because we use rhetoric and sophistry
to insult people, trying to remain in tact: better that
with any army, we're more armadillo word-to-word than the hoplites
shield-to-shield; idiots never known an insult for a gimmick
unless a chess-precise knuckle is utilised on unchaining linkages;
but like the saxon i too, on the vibrant islands of celt and caramel,
the second wave of saxons came, the scot and irish celts worried
about lambs of isaac, but lessened their concerns
with the norman landing - so i too originated upon using
my tongue to a disadvantage, and it worked, for hastings and for all,
"lying" myself abrupt with a burp for the sparrow to ease lighter spacing
of the advantaged footstep.
we were poets, word-to-word tighter than the hoplites shield-to-shield
for what the gladiators called armadillos of a farm.
socrates didn't get it, since he reasoned: i to noun, equating it only
as questioning pro to the guise of inquiry, but among the native nobility of greece,
poetry survived, songs and jests supreme, park bench hollows
for the termite lisp in sounds of the multitude,
had but the termite song bore a chair to rock a baby blue,
i'd too rock a baby in suffocating termites song,
but we known nouns are not delicious "out of time"
in the adjectives, for we know nouns as static insurmountable objects,
and given the unitary subjectivity of sport statistics,
they are only worth a passive commentary of nodding and passivity
to please - i.e., never was sloth a gamble to ease a fission of gambled lessening;
but if philosophers corrects poets, then poets end up correcting furtherance
with philosophy simply plagiarised for academia's salary bogus;
wishing that socrates only took the bribe rather than the poisonous brine.

i start the night off reading *the offence of poetry
, by an emeritus prof.,
hazard adams, gets me ******* to the point where i forgive the culprit
of rotten *** and jealous ****** born lute worthy out of wedlock...
why the violins i ask, chopin played a few dirges on piano,
why the sentiment to imagine Dickensian paupers?
a violin dropped from the sky with frogs & lepers didn't **** anyone,
but a piano did, once, in bad key.

i started the night off reading a book: the offence of poetry,
got *******,
walked off into the jiggle night starry for some beers,
walked past a family: mother, father plus 3, a boy and two girls,
headphones on, hushed, then my hairpiece the attention,
walked into the off-lice, picked up 8 cans,
stood there imitating conservative *******,
spotted the mother eagerly brushing shadows with me,
tilted from my eye corner into her face
and spotted a ****** up face of smiles:
girls talked about me like zoella,
i donned my pseudo self-inventive chonmage,
hair too thick;
but i egged them on in rugby, loving the tetragrammaton geometry of
two H, y for threes in dimensions and
all the tactic being: // \ for the w.
pardon me wrong but was it: eager eagle's nest the jester in clown's face paint
**** of splash in conversation?
but don't you just love a married woman with three kids
putting two wine bottles on a counter looking at you
after her children said something noticeable about you only secondary in dreams?

well... there's the rude story of a friend's father among many
to claim the accent in jealousy,
father ****** no. 2, hide his ***** in a ******* prior to the girthed birth
experience of: "rising to the top of law and commerce."
idiotic ******* the load of them;
happened in leicester sq. i have you know,
irish was blazed in ginger that day too reminiscent of celtic,
but as you know, intelligence and the irish swing into the maxim:
a man walks into a pub - they delivered the concrete!
the pub is emptied, the irish run out for hands on prayer missing -
in shakespearean metaphor of folding monks giving prayer to ****
the ***** and lips the kiss, for whatever reason was worth a rhythmic suffix as towed into -ed, -ed.
Stu Harley Sep 2018
with
her
heart full of joy and laughter
orange light
bounced
back and forth
with
its
reflection
than
skipped across
the
melodic surface of
the
yellow bamboo river
while
the
armadillo sunset
blared her
brass coronets

— The End —